1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic controlled drive apparatus, and more particularly to an electronic controlled drive apparatus which is mounted on a moving vehicle such as a boat, to conduct drive control of an internal combustion engine provided in the moving vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a marine field, there has been generally used a boat that is provided with an outboard engine in the rear of the boat, and which moves forward or backward according to the rotational direction of a propeller provided below the outboard engine. When such a boat in a forward running state is suddenly stopped in case of an emergency while driving the boat, or in the case where the boat is brought alongside the pier, a boat driver conducts a switching operation in the order of “forward (F: advance)”, “neutral (N)”, and “reverse (R: backward)” using a shift lever to stop the boat because the boat is not provided with a brake (for example, see JP 3278949 B).
However, there are the following problems with respect to such a conventional method. When a forward speed is high, even if the operation mode is switched to the “neutral” by the shift lever to cut drive power to the propeller, the boat continues to run forward for some time and the propeller continues to rotate slowly forward according to a flow due to the forward running of the boat. Therefore, in order to immediately stop the boat in this state, when the operation mode is switched to the “reverse” mode by the shift lever to reverse the rotational direction of the propeller, an extremely large load is applied to the engine, thereby temporarily and suddenly reducing the number of revolutions of the engine. Thus, in particular, an engine having small torque in a low rotation region causes engine stalling, and the boat cannot be adequately stopped.
Also, if, in order to prevent the above-mentioned engine stalling or the like, shift connection is conducted after the rotational speed of the drive axis of the propeller is sufficiently reduced, it takes a long time before the shift is connected, and the drivability is deteriorated.